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Most people measure a year with a calendar, but for movie and music buffs, a year is defined by its films and albums. With the COVID-19 pandemic creating a ripple effect of delays in the entertainment industry, the Grammys and the Academy Awards were pushed back to March and April, respectively. Time makes less and less sense during quarantine, so now seems as good a time as any to celebrate some of our favorites that flew under the radar in 2020.
Movies:
First Cow
“The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” Director Kelly Reichardt could not have possibly known how much this William Blake quote, seen in the epigraph during the opening credits, would resonate with audiences during the long, isolating year that was 2020.
This sharp time-loop romcom juggles fun and fatalism and resonates powerfully in the age of lockdown
Unexpected depths⦠Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg in Palm Springs. Photograph: Chris Willard./Capital Pictures
Unexpected depths⦠Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg in Palm Springs. Photograph: Chris Willard./Capital Pictures
Sat 10 Apr 2021 10.00 EDT
Itâs an unexceptional wedding. Perhaps the cocktail bar aesthetic is a touch on the cheesy side. Perhaps there are a few sexual misadventures. Certainly a lot of beer is consumed, most of it by Nyles (Andy Samberg, excellent in a role that harnesses his comic talent but hones it into a performance of unexpected depth). But what
It is a little over a year since, trousering $17,500,000.69 from Hulu and Neon, Max Barbakowâs inventive comedy broke the record for the highest ever sale at the Sundance Film Festival. Weâve read that story before. That 69 cents pushed it past the ultimately doomed The Birth of a Nation from 2016. Just two months ago, Sian Hederâs CODA, now with Apple, broke the record again with $25 million. Itâs like Groundhog Day.
No, it really is like Groundhog Day. Palm Springs begins with sarky Nyles (Andy Samberg) waking up beside his useless girlfriend in the eponymous, baking Californian city. Later, at their palsâ wedding, our hero hooks up with Sarah (Cristin Milioti), the brideâs sister, and they make for the desert. Just as they are about to seal the deal, a lunatic (the always welcome JK Simmons) appears from nowhere and shoots Nyles with an arrow.
Verdict: Lively sci-fi rom-com
Even if you were to watch the opening, pre-titles sequence in Sound Of Metal unaware that Riz Ahmed was in the running for Best Actor both at this weekend s BAFTAs and at the Academy Awards later this month, you d still know he was about to take you on an intense ride.
With badly bleached hair and a bare chest, his lean torso covered in tattoos (one of which reads Please Kill Me ), Ahmed s character Ruben sits over his drum kit at a gig, poised on the precipice of a percussive frenzy.
It s not music as most of us know it, but it s certainly noise.
Let Him Go: Diane Lane as Margaret Blackledge and Kevin Costner as George Blackledge Damon Smith
Space Dogs: Return To Earth: Strelka (voiced by Mauriett Chayeb-Mendez) and Belka (Maria Antonieta Monge)
FILM OF THE WEEK
LET HIM GO (Cert 15, 114 mins, Universal Pictures (UK) Ltd, Thriller/Romance, available from April 12 on Amazon Prime Video/BT TV Store/iTunes/Sky Store/TalkTalk TV Store and other download and streaming services, available from April 26 on DVD £19.99/Blu-ray £26.99)
Starring: Diane Lane, Kevin Costner, Lesley Manville, Kayli Carter, Will Brittain, Booboo Stewart, Ryan Bruce, Bram Hornung, Otto Hornung.
RETIRED sheriff George Blackledge (Kevin Costner) and his horse trainer wife Margaret (Diane Lane) live on a ranch in 1960s Montana with their 25-year-old son James (Ryan Bruce), his wife Lorna (Kayli Carter) and their grandson Jimmy (Bram and Otto Hornung).